Tagged: RTS

There were not as much votes as we had hoped for, and maybe some will say it was predictable, but the popular RTS game 0A.D won this month.

0 A.D. is a free, open-source, historical Real Time Strategy (RTS) game currently under development by Wildfire Games, a global group of volunteer game developers. As the leader of an ancient civilization, you must gather the resources you need to raise a military force and dominate your enemies.

“0 A.D.” is a time period that never actually existed: In the usual calendar, one goes from 1 B.C. to 1 A.D. and skips zero. This reflects the historical fiction in the game: Who would have won if all the factions were pitted against each other when each of them was at its prime?

We intend to portray some of the major civilizations over the millennium of 500 B.C. to 500 A.D. (Hence the midpoint, zero.) That is an ambitious prospect, so in the first edition of 0 A.D. we focus on the last five centuries B.C. Perhaps in future expansion packs, more civilizations will be added, along with additional gameplay features.

We put a strong emphasis on historical accuracy while developing 0 A.D. We plan all our units and all our buildings based on reconstructions of how the units and the buildings might have looked like in the ancient world. We even name them in the original languages, such as Greek and Latin. But it’s worth remembering that any game should be fun to play, so, in many cases, we preferred playability over historical accuracy.

0 A.D. is completely downloadable at no cost and always will be. No “freemium” model, no in-game advertising, no catch. This is our iron-clad guarantee.

Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D. on physical media, remember, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. gratis on the internet, directly from the developers.

0 A.D. is freely licensed software, because we believe everyone should have access to great games, and that everyone can learn from developing them. You can redistribute and modify the game as long as you abide by the GPL. And you can even use parts of the art and sound for your own projects as long as you abide by CC BY-SA.

Work on 0 A.D. began in 2001, first as a mod concept for Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings. In 2003 development moved to a standalone game with its own engine, Pyrogenesis. In 2009-2010, the game was released as free, open-source software and and much of the codebase was rewritten.

As of October 2013, 0 A.D. is still in alpha phase, which means an early experimental phase. It is playable, and you can already download and test the game, but some features are still missing. When will 0 A.D. be released? It is very hard to predict. Even after we are done implementing all the features, we will want to conduct extensive beta testing, which can take a while. Information about release dates will be released at the appropriate time.

The Real Time Strategy game Sword Of Justice from 4flash once had a kickstarter campaignwhich I’ve posted about, but sadly it failed hard. Now they try again on IndieGoGo with a much more modest goal of $70k and much more time to gather the funds – although sadly it doesn’t seems good either… They really have something there, their game is at advanced stages of development and they can already show lots of content – I don’t understand why it hasn’t been funded yet.

You have supported the projects of innumerable known and unknown groups, helping them to completion. In our story we have counted on you, the players also…

…Long-long time ago, in a distant land in Central Europe, after the disbandment of EIDOS Hungary, a few of us remained together and decided that we would try and continue to work together on the name of 4Flash. It was then that the idea came to start into bringing to realization one of the innumerable game-ideas. This became the Sword Of Justice RTS game. The aim was nothing less than to rebuild our group through our game. Thus, anybody supporting our project not only helps the completion of the game but reunites and brings into being a new development group. Firms where members of the group have worked: Eidos, Digital Reality, Most Wanted Entertainment, 3D Brigade, Glass Fish Games… Projects: Battlestation Pacific; Dance! It’s Your Stage; Jaws Unleashed…

The project was started two years ago and we would like it to be completed it by Christmas this year. For this to be achieved we considered the Indiegogo to be the best solution for you to finance the project. If we succeed to collect the necessary support then we would prepare the game not only for theWindows but for the iPad, OSX, and Linux as well. Unfortunately there is still a lot of work to be done but we hope that together it will be possible to realize the project. Since this group has no capital reserves we can not achieve this aim other than with your help. This is also helpful since you can express continual opinion concerning it while we will listen to your ideas. This was such a game can be accomplished that is fitted to the requirements of the gamers.

To whom would they offer the game:

It is to those who loved C&C and Sudden Strike; to those who like when AI not to react in a pre-ordained manner; when the gamer with good tactics is able to win even against overwhelming odds; To those who like to upgrade the given units and use them in a manner that takes best advantage of them.

The game presents a post WWII fictive story. The campaign consists of 12 principal fields. Each field is made up of one principal mission and two subsidiary missions. At the end of each field the player receives experience-points and upgrade tokens. There is no pre-determined difficulty level in the game. Each field starts with parameters suitable for normal level. If during the game, based on losses and other data the regime determines that we can not cope with the machine, then the game changes to an easier level. If the gamer plays better than the AI, the program advances to a higher level of difficulty and the field continues with those settings. According to plans, two gamers may play a single campaign in cooperative mode. Naturally the level of difficulty also is considerably greater.

The multi-player mode consists of two parts: In one, during the usual choice of field we can play free battles ranging from 1 against 1 to 4 against 4. Each player has own profile in which he/she sets initially the colors of the nation he/she starts in. It is here possible to inspect how many battles have been won and lost by the gamer and the number of points credited. If e. g., from a battle between a more and a less experienced gamer the weaker comes out on top that gamer receives a higher number of points than would be the case were a more experienced gamer to win. The pother type of multi-player mode is part of a game of global territorial occupation. In this each player starts in the colors of his/her nation On the map each state (gamer) initially lords over a given territory. He may then attack states with common boundaries to these.

We receive a player from among the ones of the attacked state who will play with us on the given field. The territory joins the state that has more battles won on the given field. In this manner a state can expand on the greater map.Gameplay Video :

The Project

The game primarily presents the military might of the Eastern European States. (Slovakia, Hungary, Russia, Rumania – in the case of multi-player mode only –in conjunction with the units of Japan (initially). With this these games no longer conform to the market of earlier WWII strategic games, in which mostly we can only meet with British, American and German forces.

The upgrading of units takes place in three categories for which we pay with tokens. There is scope for training of the selected type in the area of defense, attack strength and manpower. Each of them in six steps. In the course of these we can obtain such extra options as intelligent choice of aim or cooperation with other units or the possibility of calling for reinforcements or retreat in the case of critical injury…

In the course of playing against the machine following the possibly fleeing unit the player can easily run into a trap or run onto a minefields having been settled. The aim is that the AI (artificial intelligence) should try to bring logical decisions adjusting itself to the style of the player, rather than follow pre-generated road maps and plans.

From among our units, it is the commander whose role also diverges from the usual ones. E. g., he can not see further but his role is to coordinate the units within his radius of action. Thanks to this –if allowed –he can call reinforcements for a tank engaged in battle or even send a damaged tank to a more protected area or he can tell the unit which enemy to attack and order priorities. Thus e. g. our tanks do not attack the nearer infantry that are less dangerous to them, but attack the farther situated tanks even if they came within the area of sight later. It is possible with the commander unit to provide aiming points for artillery or bombing aircraft.

A further characteristic of the game is the delay of orders. Here the player can switch in this situation temporarily for the given unit . Here if he gives the order where to go, or what to attack it continues to wait until we give a global order to carry out the action. In this case all units move together and one need not be a wizard with the mouse in order to move more units and to different points at the same time.

If you are a fan of Total Annihilation (and Spring), you would be as excited as I am to know (if you didn’t read it already on other GNU/Linux Gaming websites) that many of the same developers will be doing a spiritual sequel on a much bigger scale, now you will be able to build bases on different planets and asteroids, and use the asteroids as a Doom’s day weapon (you got to see the concept video below).As with Total Annihilation – mods will be supported !

Almost $500,000 of the $900,000 required have been pledged so far, and there are stretch goals to reach (like a full campaign)

Planetary Annihilation brings Real-Time Strategy to a new generation of gamers in a way they’ve never been seen before: Total Annihilation-inspired gameplay on a planetary scale.

We all know that the RTS genre has taken a hit. There just aren’t that many quality original RTS games coming out. If you love to play games like Total Annihilation your options are pretty limited. This is where Planetary Annihilation comes in. It is meant to be a truly innovative spin on what RTS games can and should be.

A Solar System Is Your Playground

Expand your empire to harness the resources of entire solar systems to create vast armies with which to annihilate enemy planets, destroy rival systems and win the Galactic War!

Pick Your Battles

Play a quick skirmish with a friend on a single planet map with a low unit cap or a 12+ hour game with 40 of your closest frenemies and thousands of units. You can also hone your skills against Planetary Annihilation’s AI or team up with a friend against multiple AI’s.

Advanced Command and Control

Planetary Annihilation’s order queuing interface allows you to control massive armies spread across multiple worlds with ease. Get strategic views of the action anywhere, anytime by zooming in and out of the war zone, and use split interfaces and multiple windows to keep an eye on multiple battlegrounds at once.

Procedural Planet Creator

Create custom or randomized maps with our procedural planet creator. Like what you see? Save them and share them with the Planetary Annihilation community.

Streaming Resource Economy

Use resources to build mega projects. Assign swarms of construction units in realtime to manage your economy. Reclaim wreckage and terrain to quickly regroup after a battle.

War Machine

Planetary Annihilation’s rendering engine is brought to you by the team that developed the rendering engines for Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander. Our engine will allow you to explore vast, new procedural worlds with diverse terrain and build on everything from small, airless rocks to huge earth-type planets. No two maps are exactly alike.

Client-Server Networking Architecture

Other than Total Annihilation, which was asynchronous, most Real-Time Strategy games use a synchronous networking model, which means that all the computers in a given game are held back by the slowest machine. The Planetary Annihilation engine uses a client-server model so that the “heavy lifting” can be done on a game server, freeing up gamers’ machines to engage in bigger battles with more players!

Advanced Modding features

Create new units, gametypes, maps and planet archetypes. Run your own servers with your own sets of units and game modes.

Uber Entertainment is an independent game studio founded in 2008 by a team of industry veterans who wanted to create high quality games in a small team environment. In 2010 we released our first title, the critically-acclaimed Monday Night Combat. In 2011 we brought MNC to Steam and in 2012 we released Super Monday Night Combat, which we continue to update weekly.

(We all really really want to make this game for you.)

(We each have a lot of experience in building and delivering.)

Folks at Uber Entertainment have worked on games like Total Annihilation, Command & Conquer, Supreme Commander and Demigod. We are hugely passionate about Real-Time Strategy and can’t wait to show you our vision for the future of the genre.

(Steve and Jon are our leads. Design and dev are BFFs at Uber.)

Jon Mavor has worked in the game industry since 1993. As a longtime game engine technologist, Jon wrote the graphics engine for Total Annihilation and was the lead programmer on Supreme Commander. He has been the CTO of Uber Entertainment since its inception and is the creative lead for Planetary Annihilation.

Steve Thompson got his start in 1997 at Cavedog Entertainment, where he worked on Total Annihilation. In 1999 he joined Gas Powered Games where he worked as an animator, director of cinematics, and art director for the Dungeon Siege and Supreme Commander franchises. Steve joined Uber in 2008 and is the art director on Planetary Annihilation.

Let’s face it, game publishers today want sequels in very restrictive genres. In many cases game publisher overhead makes small projects not interesting to them.

That’s where you, the RTS fan, comes in.

(We can only get it off the ground together.)

It’s very unusual to put something like this in front of gamers this early in the process. We are in a new era where you get to decide what we spend our time on. Planetary Annihilation is meant to be a truly innovative spin on what RTS games can and should be. You as the customer get the ultimate vote in whether we make this game. Your dollars are your votes and the better we do the more resources we’ll have to bring you a great game.

Thank you so much to everyone that has supported us so far. The response has been fantastic and while there’s a bit to go, it’s really awesome to know we have so many votes of confidence and a ton of encouragement already behind us.

Ex Eidos, Digital Reality, Most Wanted Entertainment, 3D Brigade, Glass Fish Games employees decided the reunite and for a new game company called 4Flash.
Their first title which is in development for 2 years now is the C&C and Sudden Strike inspired, real time strategy game “Sword Of Justice“.

Sadly it currently looks that they would need a lot of luck (and funds) to reach their goal of $195,000 , and while it sounds like much – the game looks so much better …

“It is to those who loved C&C and Sudden Strike; to those who like when AI not to react in a pre-ordained manner; when the gamer with good tactics is able to win even against overwhelming odds; To those who like to upgrade the given units and use them in a manner that takes best advantage of them.”

The Project
The game presents a post WWII fictive story. The campaign consists of 12 principal fields. Each field is made up of one principal mission and two subsidiary missions. At the end of each field the player receives experience-points and upgrade tokens. There is no pre-determined difficulty level in the game. Each field starts with parameters suitable for normal level. If during the game, based on losses and other data the regime determines that we can not cope with the machine, then the game changes to an easier level. If the gamer plays better than the AI, the program advances to a higher level of difficulty and the field continues with those settings. According to plans, two gamers may play a single campaign in cooperative mode. Naturally the level of difficulty also is considerably greater.

The multi-player mode consists of two parts: In one, during the usual choice of field we can play free battles ranging from 1 against 1 to 4 against 4. Each player has own profile in which he/she sets initially the colors of the nation he/she starts in. It is here possible to inspect how many battles have been won and lost by the gamer and the number of points credited. If e. g., from a battle between a more and a less experienced gamer the weaker comes out on top that gamer receives a higher number of points than would be the case were a more experienced gamer to win. The pother type of multi-player mode is part of a game of global territorial occupation. In this each player starts in the colors of his/her nation On the map each state (gamer) initially lords over a given territory. He may then attack states with common boundaries to these.

We receive a player from among the ones of the attacked state who will play with us on the given field. The territory joins the state that has more battles won on the given field. In this manner a state can expand on the greater map.

The game primarily presents the military might of the Eastern European States. (Slovakia, Hungary, Russia, Rumania – in the case of multi-player mode only –in conjunction with the units of Japan (initially). With this these games no longer conform to the market of earlier WWII strategic games, in which mostly we can only meet with British, American and German forces.

Units
On account of the complex system of upgrading we planned fewer but more transparent and easier to use units in the game each of which is unique in its field but due to this we can build up strategies that are more easily combined.

On each side we can meet up with 2 heavy Armour, 1 self-propelled gun, 3 light armored vehicles of the wheeled armored sub-type (commander, heavy machine-gun and flame-thrower), repair- and transport-trucks as well as 3 varieties of guns.
Infantry consists of the usual rifle, machine-gun, marksmen, anti-tank, first aid and commander units. Thus 20 different units are at our disposal. Each unit is characterised by what it is best suited for. The player can easily oversight his sources of strength and thus build his strategy.

The Field Of The Game
At the beginning the buildings of the basis should be built on the playing field. The player can produce those units the building of it is already ready. There are long distance radio transmitters on the plating fields. The commandant communicates with the troops of other field with the aids of these towers. The player receives money for the ownership of them from that he may build, produce or purchase tokens necessary for upgrading. We may meet municipal, provincial or industrial environment on the playing fields but there are also bridges and rivers. An important property of the fields that we can not play on a plain filed at all as is used to do in other games. Huge level differences precipitous embankments make the game field manifold in which the relationships to the terrain can well be utilised. In this case the nits of the enemy turn already to be visible from a higher point however he/she does not see to the top. The lovers of the series of the Sudden Strike know it well. Thus with the units positioned in a good strategic point it is easy possible to overcome a many time stronger unit.

Upgrades
The upgrading of units takes place in three categories for which we pay with tokens. There is scope for training of the selected type in the area of defense, attack strength and manpower. Each of them in six steps. In the course of these we can obtain such extra options as intelligent choice of aim or cooperation with other units or the possibility of calling for reinforcements or retreat in the case of critical injury…

AI
In the course of playing against the machine following the possibly fleeing unit the player can easily run into a trap or run onto a minefields having been settled. The aim is that the AI (artificial intelligence) should try to bring logical decisions adjusting itself to the style of the player, rather than follow pre-generated road maps and plans.

From among our units, it is the commander whose role also diverges from the usual ones. E. g., he can not see further but his role is to coordinate the units within his radius of action. Thanks to this –if allowed –he can call reinforcements for a tank engaged in battle or even send a damaged tank to a more protected area or he can tell the unit which enemy to attack and order priorities. Thus e. g. our tanks do not attack the nearer infantry that are less dangerous to them, but attack the farther situated tanks even if they came within the area of sight later. It is possible with the commander unit to provide aiming points for artillery or bombing aircraft.

A further characteristic of the game is the delay of orders. Here the player can switch in this situation temporarily for the given unit . Here if he gives the order where to go, or what to attack it continues to wait until we give a global order to carry out the action. In this case all units move together and one need not be a wizard with the mouse in order to move more units and to different points at the same time.

The creators of the cross platform unigine engine are working on a game that will show what their engine is capable of.
This game is a Real Time Strategy with excellent graphics and it’s called Oil Rush.

Key Features

High-end graphics
Multi-player over LAN and Internet

Multi-platform:

Windows
Linux
PlayStation 3

Explosive gameplay with rushing swarms of furious enemies

Various environments

Mod SDK available

Game Play
OilRush is a real-time strategy game based on the group control. It offers mechanics of a classical RTS combined with a Tower Wars genre: control the building and upgrading of production platforms as well as their defence forces, and send battle groups of naval and air units to capture enemy’s platforms and oil rigs.
The game can be played with your friends over LAN or Internet.

Setting
In the post-apocalyptic flooded world there are two things running short: oil and time. The last survivors in a desperate desire to seize control and dominate the enemy have started the naval warfare that made the whole world one large battlefield. In these harsh and cruel times, oil is thicker than blood.

Oil
Oil that is pumped by oil rigs is the main resource in the OilRush world. In exchange for oil you can buy additional defense turrets and make high technology researches.

Oil Rigs
Oil rigs cannot defend themselves. Controlling them is an extremely important and difficult task.

Production Platforms
Platforms build attack units of a specific type. You can also equip them with defense turrets to fight against enemy attacks. Casting special abilities to the platform affects all units close to it.

Units
Battle groups are formed of several unit types: various ships, aircraft and submarines. Choose them wisely since you will be struggling against different kinds of enemy defense.

Technology Tree
Making special technology researches brings you more advanced defense and more powerful attack weaponry, including nukes.

Current StateThe game is currently at the end of production stage. Digital release of PC version is planned for Q4 2010.

Two days ago they released a new build (0.2.2.0) that now has an experimental support for GNU/Linux 64-bit !
As with someother indie games, you can download and try the latest build if you preorder the game for about $30.

Achron will be released at 2011 ,without DRM.

The GNU/Linux 32-bit is NOT supported at this point, however they are planning to support it in the future :

“32-bit support is planned for the future. We knew we wanted to only
support one architecture for Linux for now (just like we’re only
supporting 32-bit architecture for Windows for now), because each platform
adds many more hours to our build and testing process; because we’re such
a small team, this time takes its toll. Eventually, we may set up a first
round of testers if there’s interest, which would ease this process a
little.

The decision to initially only support 64-bit instead of 32-bit basically
came down to these main points:

1) Our local Linux installations are currently 64-bit (we mainly use
Ubuntu); compiling and linking all the libraries with 32-bit code instead
of 64-bit code proved to be a bit of extra work (not to mention support
for debuggers, etc.). Further, we had some library portability issues
getting a version of Achron built on a 64-bit system to run on someone’s
32-bit installation.

2) From the people we’ve talked to who are running Linux, most of those
who had computers fast enough to run Achron were running 64-bit.

3) 64-bit is “the future”. Despite the increased extra address size, the
increased number of registers and other ISA improvements help out a lot.

So, unless there’s a rapid migration to 64-bit Linux over the next year,
we’ll release it for 32-bit Linux at some point. Most likely this will be
after we have an automatic update system to make our lives simpler.

Also, Achron pretty much needs the Nvidia or ATI proprietary drivers to be
playable. The Mesa software OpenGL drivers work and render fine, but it’s
too slow to be playable. The only exception here is the
GL_ARB_draw_buffers extension, which isn’t critical now, but may be in the
future.”

Achron is not Real Time Strategy game (RTS) it’s well beyond this “simple” aspect and deserves it’s own category of game genre.

Achron is still in heavy development and will have a GNU/Linux client in the future.
This game promises to be revolutionary in terms of gameplay.
It plays like RTS game but you can go back in time and undo your moves, go back to present and see the outcome.
If your opponent changes the present you will be notified and could go back to that time line and try to change it again.
Achron has a speed control that let’s you play in slow-motion, fast forward and even pause the game to give commands.

How would combat change if you could foresee the future? If you could prevent your past mistakes from ever happening? What if your enemy could too?

Achron is the first game to feature single-player and multiplayer free-form time travel. It is the world’s first meta-time strategy game, a real-time strategy game where players and units can jump to and play at different times simultaneously and independently.

You can undo your mistakes, change your strategy after committing to it, preview the future, freeze time to perfectly coordinate attacks, and send entire fleets through time to when they are needed. However, all of your opponents will also be independently moving across time, attempting to rewrite history in their favor…

TS – Real Time Strategy
Achron is a futuristic RTS featuring three races with vastly different playing styles where you create your buildings and army, explore the map, expand to acquire more resources, upgrade your tech tree, and engage in combat with your foes.

Timeline and Timewaves
Like many other games, Achron allows the player to view an overhead map of the surrounding area. However, Achron also shows a map of the timeline. If the player is attacked at a certain point in time, the timeline will show the amount of damage received at that point by a large amount of red on that portion of the timeline. The timeline also shows information including damage dealt and chronoports. Being able to see the amount of available resources at any point in time helps the player figure out the best points in time to construct more units.

Information on the timeline can be lumped into three categories:
1) A map of time – “Your opponent will attack you in 1 minute”
2) Inform strategy – “You should have taken advantage of your resources and built a larger army 2 minutes ago, go change the past”
3) Changes to the timeline – “Your opponent just undid an entire battle in the past”

Changes in history are not instantly propagated through the timeline, but instead are brought forward via evenly separated timewaves, giving the player opportunities to plan and react to those past changes before the next time wave sweeps by. These changes from the revised history are not reflected on the players’ screens until the proper timewave passes the player.

Chronoenergy
To prevent all players from always playing in the far past, their ability to change the past is limited by chronoenergy, a regenerating resource. Each command issued to every unit in the past consumes chronoenergy, limiting how much a player can change and play in the past. It is much more costly to modify a battle that occurred six minutes ago than a battle that happened only 30 seconds ago.

Hierarchy
A hierarchy is created when the player directs units to report to another unit, turning that chosen unit into a commander. The player can then direct commanders to report to other units, creating a command hierarchy tree. Since each command issued in the past consumes chronoenergy, the player can use the hierarchy to control any number of units by issuing just one command to the top level commander. In addition to enabling the player to change history without using up more chronenergy, the command hierarchy assists with some micromanagement. For example, any unit under attack in an otherwise idle hierarchy group will summon the wrath of the rest of the group, even when it’s beyond the group’s visibility range. Hierarchies also add flexibility to the player in terms of how groups of units move and attack, allowing the player to control units at any level within a hierarchy.

Speed Controls
The speed controls allow the player to progress through time at different rates. Pause and slow-mo can be used by the player to issue precise orders in a hectic situation, while playing in fast-forward is useful for players replaying in the past. Playing in fast-forward allows the player to catch up to the present. Fast-forward is particularly useful because when a player spends time in the past, the present has advanced by the same amount of time.

Chronoporting
In Achron, the players are able to send units through time, a process we call Chronoporting. If teleporting is instantly jumping through space, chronoporting is instantly jumping through time. This ability adds interesting new strategies as well as the creation of paradoxes which are automatically resolved by the game via the process discussed on the paradoxes page.

Many games utilize the concept of tele-fragging someone, where you destroy your opponent by teleporting to the same location as them. In Achron, a Chronofrag is when a unit travels through time but winds up occupying the same space as another unit. The weaker of the two units will be destroyed, while the stronger will immediately incur the appropriate amount of damage as they cannot both occupy the same space at the same time.

Races
There are three races in Achron, each with its own unique style of gameplay.
Vecgir: Rugged masters of teleportation
Grekim: Mobile masters of time travel
Humans: Specialized masters of offense

Resequence Engine

The Resequence Engine is a flexible game engine that enables multiple players and agents within the game to perform free-form time travel within a time window. It is a stable, high-performance game engine that can be used to create a variety of different game types beyond RTS. The core gameplay mechanisms, in-game scripting, and user interface are all fully customizable.

Serious Gaming, Training, & Multi-Temporal Decision Support Platform

The technology behind Achron’s Resequence engine opens up avenues for practical applications beyond time travel in video games. We have received significant interest in using this technology for serious games such as military and corporate applications. The main applications are as follows:

Training: Resequence can be used to teach causality and long-term effects. Because users can play at any point on the timeline, they must constantly evaluate and reevaluate the consequences of each of their decisions. If a user has made a mistake, the user can go back in time, retract commands, and re-issue new commands to the units. Players are thus able to change history, blurring the boundary between hypothetical and committed decisions. In particular, the player can revisit critical decision points, learn what decisions had the most long-term impact, and use statistical information on the timeline to make more informed decisions.

Finding Best-Response Strategies: Resequence’s support for multiple users to simultaneously change history can further enhance training. Each user can take advantage of an opponent’s strategic weaknesses in the past, and each user can correct mistakes in strategy and determine the best response to their opponent. This helps users to find minmax strategies, that is, strategies that minimize the maximum possible loss. Loss of information asymmetry can be severely detrimental to a given strategy, but Resequence pushes users to account for the possibility that their opponent may learn of their strategy before it is executed. Users can look into the future to see what the outcomes of their current strategies and their opponent’s strategies will be.

Qualitative Sensitivity Analysis of Simulations: Given a particular simulation, a user can revisit decision points on the timeline and determine their long-term effects. Seemingly major decisions may turn out to have little impact on long-term effects. Similarly, seemingly minor effects, such as improper etiquette with a local leader, may drastically alter the course of events. Resequence provides a new interface to drive simulations for exploring the effects of decisions.

Collaborative Planning: Multiple users can simultaneously edit a strategic plan, with information on the timeline guiding the users to prevent conflicting plans. Resequence can be viewed in this regard as an automatically merging configuration management system for strategies. The merging of plans is done by time waves, which carry the causality of changes in the past to the future. As events change on the timeline, the statistics depict change and pulse so a user can see how other players are affecting the time line.

Time Waves as a Computation Model
In the abstract sense, threads refer to different computational tasks running at the same time on different parts of some larger task. Time Waves, which are one of the cornerstones of Resequence, turn threads on their side; time waves operate on the same task but at different points in time. Threads and time waves are thus orthogonal and may be combined.

Time waves are a new model to run simulations or even deployed software wherever a user wants to change the history of an application while it is running (e.g., removing a fault that occurred in the past, fast-forwarding the change to the present) or wants to run a simulation which uses its own future output as input for predicting the future (e.g., financial modeling). Time waves may be used instead of or as a complement to reversible computing.

It’s very hard to find useful/interesting screenshots for this game (at this point), but I highly recommend watching the videos so you can understand better the gameplay and concept.